SummerMath, Part 1: Board Games

Yes, I know it's summer, and very few of you are actually reading this, but those of you who are most likely saying to yourselves, "Selves, it's summer, and there's no school, and WHATEVER are we to do to keep little Ashley and little Braden from forgetting all they ever knew about that most important of disciplines, Mathematics??"

Fear not! says the Math Guy. Today I begin a survey of Ways to Keep Your Children Thinking Mathematically During the Summer Without Screaming or Excessive Boredom. Since this is a bit of a mouthful, I call it SummerMath for short. You can tell it's trendy and cool because of the way I combined two words with Capital Letters and NoSpaces, like StubHub and ExxonMobil.

Part 1 is Board Games.

Board games are great mathematical tools. They are wonderful ways of teaching and reinforcing math concepts from number sense to probability and from addition and subtraction to estimation. They're fun, too, and the math isn't always obvious, so if little Ashley and little Braden have already decided they don't much like math (which would be EXTREMELY DEPRESSING) they may not rebel.

A few examples:

MONEY. Kids love money. The like it best when it's real, but they enjoy it when it's pretend, too. Games that involve buying and selling help reinforce money skills. When they play Monopoly, for instance, kids have to count out specific dollar amounts (and they usually need to do so as efficiently as possible--$20 + $5 + $1 rather that 26 one-dollar bills, for example). They have to think about giving change. They have to focus on the difference between $200 and $2000--oh, those zeroes. They need to have some idea of how much ca$h they have on hand--enough to buy six houses, three houses, one house? And they need to compare: Who's really ahead? Is my stack of $10s more or less impressive than your three puny $50s?

ADDITION and SUBTRACTION. Money involves adding and subtracting, of course. Games with dice are particularly good for this, too. Rolling two dice and moving that total is basic to lots of board games and provides great practice for sums to 12. The game Sorry has a feature where if you draw a 7 card, you can split the move between two pieces--a nice way of developing fluency with these facts. Chutes and Ladders: "Ooh, I hope I get a 5; then I'll land on the ladder that will take me up to the top row!" And many games require players to add in order to figure out their score: think Scrabble, for example.



MULTIPLICATION and DIVISION. Scrabble, again, with its double and triple letter and double/triple word squares. Monopoly occasionally calls on players to multiply. I couldn't quite figure out my nephew Davey's "Lord of the Rings" version of Risk--his mom bought it at a yard sale for $1 ("best purchase I ever made," she says), but I'm not clear if the rules were included--but the original Risk game required players to divide the number of territories they owned by three to determine the number of reinforcements they got at the beginning of each turn.

PROBABILITY. This is a big one in any board game that includes chance. Kids may not be able to articulate precisely WHY they "probably" won't land on Free Parking this roll, but the more they play the more they notice that some dice rolls come up more often than others. Attacking 3 on 1 in Risk gives you better odds than attacking 2 on 1 or 3 on 2. My Stratego piece is powerful and is probably more powerful than yours, so attacking makes sense; this other piece is of very low rank, so I'll run away because your piece is probably stronger.



GRIDS, GRAPHS, and SPATIAL THINKING. Battleship (which can be played easily enough with pencil and paper) uses a coordinate grid system. Games like chess and Stratego require players to think in more than one dimension. So does Connect Four. I once had a three-dimensional tick-tack-toe board (I was TERRIBLE at it; fortunately, so were most of my friends). Othello, also known as Reversi, is another good example. There are lots more too.

ATTRIBUTES, LOGIC,and STRATEGIC THINKING. Mastermind (another one that you don't really need a board for). Checkers. Chess. Thinking ahead: if I do this, then she will probably do that. I should move this piece in parcheesi instead of THAT piece because then I might be able to catch that other piece on my next move...I'll test your unknown Stratego piece by using my lowest-ranking piece because it might be a bomb; I can afford to lose a scout but I can't afford to lose a colonel. And of course logic is at the heart of Clue: [drumroll] Miss Scarlett [drumroll] in the kitchen [louder drumroll] with the WRENCH!

NUMBER SENSE and ESTIMATION. You're on Boardwalk in Monopoly. You roll a 5 and a 2. Where are you now? Oriental Avenue--1 space to Go, then 6 more to Oriental. You're on Kentucky Avenue. You roll a 9. There are 10 spaces along each side of the board, and Kentucky is one space after Free Parking--so go to the end of the row--oops, "Go to Jail." You've got a bunch of beans in a space on the mancala board. Where will the last one land if you distribute them, and will that be advantageous to you? You drew an 8 in Sorry--can you tell by looking whether that will get you to the space where your opponent's man is right now?

I hope you get the idea! If you play these games with your kids, it can help to "think aloud" some of your moves and to ask leading questions: "Let's see, I just spelled the word BOX; I get double value for that X, so that's double 8, which is 16; the B is worth 3 points, and 6+3=9, so we're up to 19, and one more point for the O makes 20." "I owe you $36. Here's two twenties. What do you need to give me back for change?" "You told me that E-6 was a hit, but E-5 was a miss, and I know that E-8 was a part of your cruiser; I'll try other spaces in the 6 column." But that's not necessary, and I wouldn't advise pushing it. Unless they're playing absolutely mindlessly, they will pick up some of these concepts even if the game is played in complete and utter silence!

And yes, I DID play lots and lots of board games as a child--why do you ask? In fact, my family's old Monopoly board has a faint track worn into it by the pieces moving steadily around the spaces... (Hint: The railroads are a really good deal in the early stages of Monopoly, a nice steady income, but trade them in mid-game.)